What Was the Internet Research Agency?

Earlier this week, the Senate intelligence committee released a pair of reports analyzing the social media output of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian outfit that masqueraded as Americans as it pumped out millions of social media posts aimed at dividing the United States and helping elect Trump,

The New York Times’ front-page coverage of these reports focused on how the IRA tried to influence the black vote, with critics calling that paternalistic. The lead author of one of the studies wrote that her report showed the need for a broad effort to combat disinformation.

After reading these reports, what struck me was something else. I was blown away by the sophistication of the IRA’s efforts, which, the reports showed, had a broader reach than previously understood.

To borrow a line from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, let’s stop calling what the Russians did meddling. This was not merely the work of some amateurs in what’s often called the “St. Petersburg troll factory.” This outfit had the hallmarks of a professional intelligence operation.

(In my book, Trump/Russia, I’ve written about how the IRA tactics are a modern twist on an old spy game that dates back to the WWII Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Special Services, the predecessor to the CIA.)

Exhibit A is a startling and previously unreported tactic employed by the IRA: Recruiting human assets.

One of the IRA’s more popular Facebook pages was a fake Christian group called “Army of Jesus.” This site offered free counseling to people with sexual addiction.

“Army of Jesus” Facebook ad

As one of the Senate-commissioned reports notes, “Recruiting an asset by exploiting a personal vulnerability – usually a secret that would inspire shame or cause personal or financial harm if exposed – is a timeless espionage practice.” People did respond to these posts, although it’s not known how effective these and other campaigns were.

A revealing side note: the “Army of Jesus” Facebook site that offered free sexual addiction counseling originally started as a Kermit the Frog account, then switched to The Simpsons before turning to Jesus.

This tactic will be increasingly common as platforms make it more difficult to grow pages and buy ads with fake personas. It will be extremely difficult to detect. The number of organic posts that reveal attempts to engage with Americans reinforces our conviction that influence operations are unlikely to be managed without information sharing between the public and private sector.

NewKnowldge, “The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency”

It also turns out that the IRA was involved in selling merchandise. Some of the merchandise was aimed at building audience, particularly in the accounts targeting the black community. The IRA also sold LGBT-positive sex toys (!)

In addition to a source of revenue, merchandise sales allowed the IRA to gather personal information: names, addresses, email address and phone numbers, as well as credit card information. Once again, this has an espionage application for source recruitment.

Finally, the most frightening thing is that this work continues. IRA accounts remain active. Russia continues meddling in the recent U.S. midterm elections, as members of the Trump administration have conceded.

Make no mistake: The Trump administration could easily stop this activity if it wanted to. It could take steps that really make Russia nervous like sanctioning its debt or banning its banks from any activity in the United States. But Trump won’t do that.

The question is why not?

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One comment

Why not? I think we all know the answer to that question. Why don’t we know anything about what transpired including any possible agreements in meetings between Putin and Trump? And why has it required extraordinary digging for us to discover Trump’s connections to Russia and Putin? Because Trump doesn’t want us to know. And why would Trump not want us to know? Because if we learned it all, then that would most likely mean 20 years to Life for Trump and probably several members of his family in addition to the loss of everything with any ties to the Trump Organization and to Trump.

To add: I’m willing to bet that I haven’t come close to suggesting all of the criminal activities related to and not related to Russia that Trump and the Trump Organization has been up to over the decades.